The RNA Chaperone Hfq Is Required for Virulence of Bordetella pertussis

AUTHOR CORRECTION

Volume 81, no. 11, p. 4081–4090, 2013. “Bordetella pertussis 18323” should be replaced with “Bordetella pertussis Tohama I” throughout.

We recently became aware that since 2008, our laboratory has used a Bordetella pertussis strain that was erroneously labeled and referred to in this publication as Bordetella pertussis 18323. Single nucleotide polymorphism analysis and determination of the draft genome sequence of the strain performed by Dr. Harris at the Sanger Institute revealed that we have been working with the B. pertussis Tohama I strain. The genome sequence data for this strain (assembled sequence contigs) from the study named “Sequencing Czech Bordetella pertussis wP vaccine strains” can be downloaded from the ENA under study accession number ERP003836, using the following link: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/SAMEA2177726.

In all future experiments and publications, we will refer to this strain as “B. pertussis Tohama I.” We sincerely apologize to all colleagues for any confusion that may have arisen from the unfortunate error that, however, has no effect whatsoever on the validity of the published data obtained with a reference B. pertussis strain and mutants derived thereof.